BIG IDEA:
GOD’S CASE AGAINST ISRAEL EXPOSES HER MORAL FAILURES DERIVED FROM NOT KNOWING GOD — LEADING TO COSMIC CONSEQUENCES
INTRODUCTION:
Allen Guenther: The book of Hosea divides naturally into two parts. Chapter four begins the second part. Here the personal family experiences of Hosea recede into the background and the nation of Israel takes center stage. . . The rest of the book will unpack these three compact verses.
OUTLINE
The Case: God Versus North Israel, 4:1a-b
4:1a Hear Ye! Hear Ye!
4:1b The Case Described: Heirs Claim Squatter’s Right
The Charges, 4:1c-2
4:1c Found Missing: Variations on a Theme
No Integrity: Jezreel
No Family Affection: Lo-ruhamah
No Knowledge of God: Lo-ammi
4:2 A Litany of Evil: Violations of the Law
Cursing: Atheism in Action
Deception: Destroying Trust
Murder: Premeditated Violence
Theft: Threat to Livelihood
Adultery: Violations of Family Intimacy
The Snowball Effect
The Whole World Cries with Them, 4:3
Gary Smith: Hosea begins by calling the Israelites to attention (4:1a), announcing that God has a covenant lawsuit against his people (4:1b), and revealing the reasons for this dispute (4:1c). His complaint is that the people exhibit no true faithfulness to him, no steadfast covenant love toward him or others, and no acknowledgment of him as their divine overlord. These three elements have disrupted God’s relationship with his covenant people.
James Mays: This oracle stands at the beginning of the second major section of the book, which in contrast to chs. 1–3 is wholly composed of an arrangement of sayings. The collector must have found it an ideal introduction to the sequence with its opening summons to the Israelites to hear Yahweh’s word and its comprehensive statement of Israel’s guilt and of the punishment to come upon the entire land with all its creatures. In spite of its brevity the oracle is virtually a paradigm of Hosea’s message of judgment. The oracle begins with a proclamation formula (elsewhere in Hosea only in 5.1) which identifies the words as Yahweh’s message to Israel (v. 1a). The following sentence (v. 1b α) defines the subject of the herald’s proclamation; he is there to make an announcement concerning the legal suit which Yahweh has against the residents of the land. Appropriately the saying itself is formulated in the idiom of speech in the court, an example of the ‘court speech’ in which the prophets on occasion clothed their announcements of judgment. Though the saying is introduced as the ‘word of Yahweh’, the saying never shifts to the style of the divine speech; this may be due to the subject matter or more probably the prophet reports the business of the divine court without resort to the style. The prophet cites the complaint (rīb), the substance of Yahweh’s case, first in negatives using normative concepts for the conduct expected of Israel (v. 1bß) and then positively (v. 2) by itemizing a series of crimes against the divine law. The result is the most comprehensive picture possible of the sins of omission and commission, a portrayal of a population living in flagrant contradiction of their Lord. The announcement of punishment (v. 3) states the sentence of the divine court.
David Allen Hubbard: This is clearly a new section:
(1) marked by a call to attention – ‘Hear the word of Yahweh’ (cf. 5:1; Amos 3:1; 4:1; 5:1);
(2) addressed to Israel, who had been discussed as they in 3:4–5;
(3) phrased in poetry not prose; and
(4) directed to the present sins of the people not to future rescue.
It is a comprehensive judgment speech indicting sin in sweeping terms (vv. 1–2) and announcing a judgment of cosmic scope (v. 3). The formal opening, the use of controversy (Heb. rîb; cf. on 2:2), and the legal tone of the indictment have been interpreted as the framework of a covenant lawsuit (Wolff, p. 66). Since a number of ingredients are lacking – a summons to witnesses (cf. Mic. 6:3–5), questions and answers about divine requirements (cf. Mic. 6:6–8) – it is more likely that the literary form compresses an argument or quarrel between Yahweh and the people rather than a scene of formal legal charges.
John Goldingay: Neat Structure
Exhortation to listen (4:1a)
The reason (kî): Yahweh has an argument to set out (4:1bα)
The content of the argument (kî) (4:1bβ–2):
negative (v. 1bβ)
and positive (v. 2)
The consequences that will follow (ʿal-kēn, 4:3)
(:1a) SOLEMN SUMMONS – PAY ATTENTION
“Listen to the word of the LORD, O sons of Israel,”
Robin Routledge: The term rîb sometimes points to a legal charge brought by God against the people because of their failure to meet their covenant obligations. That seems to be the case here too, though this oracle does not follow the general pattern of covenant lawsuits.
I. (:1b) COMPELING CASE AGAINST ISRAEL
“For the LORD has a case against the inhabitants of the land,”
J. Andrew Dearman: 4:1–3 is an accusation and a dispute using terminology that reflects formal means of accusation and contains a summary of the evidence for the charge. . . The case is against the inhabitants of the land, which for readers of the book will bring to mind the charge in 1:2 that “the land commits harlotry against YHWH.” The addressees in 4:1 make explicit what was implicit in that earlier verse: the personified land represents the people of Israel. The inhabitants are also the descendants (lit. children) of Israel. Their identity is that of a covenant people, bound to YHWH by promise and by historical intervention.
Trent Butler: Once these inhabitants of the land had been Canaanites whom God had told Israel to destroy (Josh. 9:4). Now the inhabitants were Israelites whom God had now begun to destroy.
God had good reason. He could not find the characteristics that were supposed to mark Israel off as God’s people who were unlike the peoples of the land.
Jeremy Thomas: Now why does he refer to them as the inhabitants of the land? Because it’s His land. It’s not Israel’s land. Really it’s God’s land and Israel is His tenant in the land. But ultimately it’s His land and they’ve been bad tenants. So he says this just to remind them, hey guys, it’s My land. I let you live in it. I gave you blessing in it. I gave you agriculture, I gave you nutrients, I gave you produce, I gave you rains, I gave you blessing. And what have you done to Me? How have you thanked Me? It’s My land. And in the Hebrew there’s an article in front of the word land which means it emphasizes not just land, but “the land,” the land of the covenant, that’s the issue. You are inhabiting My land.
D. A. Carson: The language used here implies that God has entered into an argument or quarrel with Israel. Perhaps we should think of a lawsuit, such as was carried out at the gates of the city. We can imagine Hosea approaching the elders sitting for judgment, and announcing that God himself has a dispute to bring.
II. (:1b-2) COMPREHENSIVE CHARGES
Jeremy Thomas: So what’s God pointing out right at the start of the case? No stability in the nation, no loyal love, no intimacy with God. In other words, it’s all vertical stuff missing. It isn’t social problems in the community, its theological problems in the community. These people have first and foremost a theological problem. After that we get into the social problems. Always think this way. Train yourself to think this way. You can talk all day about the social problems, so and so can’t straighten his behavior out, but ultimately the social problems stem from theological problems. So therefore if you’re going to solve a behavior problem you have to get into theological discussion. See, everyone recognizes the social problem, so and so is misbehaving and they need to adjust to societal norms so we send them to the local psychiatrist, the local AA, pop a pill. It’s always a gimmick and the solution is to straighten out your theology. Something is screwed up deep in the heart of people that no gimmick can repair. Of course, we’re religiously neutral so it couldn’t be a theological issue. And right there you’ve already admitted it is. There is no neutrality. If you say God’s not related to the problem then you’ve said in effect God doesn’t exist and that my friend is a theological statement. And until you solve the theological tension in your soul you’re never going to fix in any permanent way the social problem.
A. (:1b) Sins of Omission – Lacking Virtues – Theological Issues
- No Firm Commitment / Integrity / Faithfulness — Jezreel
“Because there is no faithfulness”
H. Ronald Vandermey: In terms of that which had been omitted, the prophet laments that Israel had not cultivated within herself the three blessings that spoke of her unique covenant relationship to the Lord: faithfulness, kindness, and the knowledge of God. Faithfulness, which comes from a root word that means “to confirm, to sustain, to support” (Hebrew, emeth; literally, “truth”), was nowhere to be found because the people of Israel had not sustained or supported the covenant with God—a pattern that spilled over into their relationships with their fellow men (7:1, 2, 11; 10:13; 11:12). Kindness (Hebrew, chesed; often translated “lovingkindness, mercy, kindness, and loyalty”) is that special Hebrew term for God’s covenant love, which was first manifested to Israel in her redemption from Egypt (Exod. 15: 13). This covenant love will again be operative when God draws the whole house of Israel back to Himself (2:19; 10:12; 12:6; Jer. 31:1-3; cf. Psalms 17:7; 25:6; 69:16; 103:4; Isa. 63:7; Jer. 9:24; 16:5; 32:18).
Gary Smith: The quality of “faithfulness” (ʾ emet) or truth describes a firmness in the people’s commitment (their yes cannot be a half-hearted or unresolved decision), a reliability in their responsibilities (they do not waver back and forth, but have integrity), and an honesty about what they say (there is no deception, but the people have made a lasting choice). People who have this quality will be true and faithful to what they know and will give themselves to it completely. If the Israelites are untrustworthy, uncommitted, deceptive, and undecided about their devotion to God, how can God maintain a relationship with them?
Allen Guenther: When ‘emet is absent, people are cavalier with the truth in casual conversation, as well as when under oath (Jer. 9:5; Isa. 48:1). Its opposite is deceit, lies, providing false witness, perverting justice, and fickleness. People without ‘emet cannot be trusted; they lack essential integrity. Deep down they are fractured with fissures spreading throughout their being. This absence of ‘emet, signified by the name Jezreel, dominates the prophecies of Hosea 11:12 – 14:8.
- No Covenant Love – Lo-Ruhamah
“or kindness”
Gary Smith: The quality of “steadfast covenant love” (ḥesed) demonstrates a loving and compassionate attitude devoted to maintaining an existing relationship. Such people keep their obligations to their partners based on their care for them. They are loyal to the relationship, for ḥesed “is the ‘essence’ of the covenantal relationship.” They express their emotional heart connection to the one they love both by their actions and their words. Their love is deep and consistent. If the Israelites do not maintain a love relationship with God, how can their covenant relationship continue in any kind of meaningful way?
James Mays: Ḥesed denotes the attitude and activity which founds and maintains a relation; the relation can be one given by birth or the social order, or created by arrangement. A man shows ḥesed when he is concerned and responsive to do in a given relation what another can rightfully expect according to the norms of that relationship. In Hosea the sphere of ḥesed is the covenant with Yahweh.
- No Knowledge of God – Lo-Ammi
“Or knowledge of God in the land.”
Gary Smith: The concept of “knowing God” has both an objective aspect (truthful information about who he is) and a subjective aspect (a personal relationship with God that acknowledges him as the sovereign power over one’s life and excludes any acknowledgment of Baal as deity). This characteristic is especially important because some of the people were worshiping multiple gods and confusing God with Baal (2:16). They have not made the effort to really know God. Part of the reason for this ignorance and confusion was the general acceptance of Canaanite religious beliefs in Israelite culture, plus a lack of clear priestly teaching about God from the Torah (4:6).
Lloyd Ogilvie: What does it mean to know God and live with a knowledge of Him? It involves both intimacy and integrity. The intimacy of the Thou-I relationship we were created to experience with God requires the opening of our innermost being to Him just as He has revealed His innermost nature to us. The word intimacy means “proceeding from within, inward, internal.” In the Hebrew, the word for “knowledge,” as we have seen in our exposition of Hosea 2:20, has the same root as “to know.” It also is used for the physical and spiritual oneness of a husband and wife. Knowledge of God is more than ideas about Him. Knowledge of God involves the total inner person: intellect, emotion, and will. God knows all about what is going on inside us—we cannot hide from Him. The beginning of our knowledge of God, our relationship with Him, is when we know that we are known. So the psalmist says, “O LORD, You have searched me and known me” (Ps. 139:1). The psalmist yields his inner being to God when he realizes he is known by Him, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way ever-lasting” (Ps. 139:23–24). Both our understanding and awareness of God are met in response to our being known absolutely and thoroughly by Him.
God has revealed Himself throughout history and sublimely in Jesus Christ. But until we yield our inner self to Him, we do not experience an intimate union with Him.
Knowledge of God also calls forth our integrity. The word means wholeness—undivided, unimpaired—completeness. Integrity is congruity of behavior, consistency between what we believe and what we do. Intimacy with God, knowing Him as He has revealed Himself, must be inseparably intertwined with His character and commandments. He has chosen to be our God and elected us to be His people. Knowing Him therefore requires integrity, congruity of a life of faithfulness. Obedience is the secret of a growing knowledge of God.
James Mays: The lack of the knowledge of God is Israel’s cardinal deficiency (4.2); it is what Yahweh demands rather than sacrifice (6.6); in spite of the people’s claims and resolutions (6.3; 8.2) its reality is completely missing in their present life. Neither pious confession nor enthusiastic cult result in the knowledge of God. What is required is the knowledge that Yahweh as he was revealed in the Exodus is their only God (13.4), that his healing help saw them through the history of their beginnings (12.3), and that it is Yahweh who gives them the good things of the land (2.8).
Allen Guenther: The theme of Hosea 4:4 – 6:3 centers on the danger of not knowing God and warns Israel against pursuing that course of life.
S. Lewis Johnson: The difficulty ultimately lies in the doctrine. When there is no knowledge of God, then we may expect dishonesty and we may expect all of the other kinds of things that characterize a people who do not know the lovingkindness of God. So honesty and love are the products of the knowledge of God.
Now in the details, one who knows the Ten Commandments immediately recognizes that what Hosea is doing is charging the Nation Israel with the breaking of the commandments that have to do with the relationship of man to man, the second table of the law. There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing and adultery – they’ve broken the sixth, the seventh, the eighth and the ninth commandments, and the results even touch the lower creation.
B. (:2) Sins of Commission – Multiplying Vices – Social Issues
- Transgressing God’s Laws
“There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing, and adultery.”
Gary Smith: They are breaking their covenant with God by doing what was prohibited in the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:2–17), which summarize the covenant requirements. The people curse (take God’s name in vain), lie, murder, steal, commit adultery, and break all the boundaries laid out to regulate their covenant relationship with God. Some may be surprised that Hosea brings up these types of issues rather than the worship of false gods, but to Hosea the prophet, religious faith and social action are mirrors of one another. One can argue all day about whether a person really believes or loves God; it is easier to decide the issue without argument by simply pointing to the way God’s people are living. Faith and love are revealed by behavior.
David Allen Hubbard: If virtues are lacking, vices are present, each of which is expressed in terms plucked verbatim from Israel’s law codes:
(1) swearing (Heb. ’lh) breaks the commands against unworthy uses of the divine name (Exod. 20:7; Deut. 5:11) by damning others and attaching Yahweh’s name to the curse (cf. 10:4; Exod. 21:17, 20; Judg. 17:2);
(2) lying (Heb. kḥš) violates the personal and legal rights of others, especially when it entails false witness in legal deliberations, financial transactions, or religious vows (7:3; 10:13; 12:1; Lev. 19:11; cf. Exod. 23:1–3, 6–9);
(3) killing (Heb. rṣḥ) is murder, the taking of human life without due process of law (6:9; Exod. 20:13; Deut. 27:24);
(4) stealing (Heb. gnb) originally implied kidnapping and was expanded to include crimes of appropriating the valuable possessions of another (Exod. 20:15, 17; Lev. 9:11; note the death penalty for it in Exod. 21:16); and
(5) committing adultery (Heb. n’p; see on 1:2; 2:2; 3:1) caps the list as the expression of Israel’s spiritual and physical promiscuity (cf. 4:13–14; 7:4; Exod. 20:14; Lev. 20:10).
J. Andrew Dearman: Three of the transgressions (murder, theft, adultery) are terms also used in the Decalogue, but the accusations in 4:2 are not limited to its strictures. The first five transgressions are those that ruin human community and are an affront to the God of Israel. All five of them reappear elsewhere in Hosea. Swearing (ʾālōh) is probably used in the context of swearing an oath in the form of a curse or imprecation. In that regard, it may be similar to the third commandment of the Decalogue, which forbids the use of the Lord’s name “in vain.” Isaiah 24:6 uses the term as a noun in the context of imprecation or curse (whatever its origin) with negative consequences for the land: “a curse (ʾālâ) consumes the land; those who inhabit her are guilty.” Much of the vocabulary in Isa. 24:6 is also contained in Hos. 4:2–3, including the connection between curse, guilty inhabitants of the land, and the debilitating circumstances for the land. The connection reflects Hosea’s holistic mode of thinking and its implication that negative acts influence communities as a whole.
Lying (kaḥēš) is also more broadly deceitfulness. Possibly the term approximates what is forbidden in the ninth commandment, false testimony (Exod. 20:16). Lying is not only deceit, but can be part of defrauding and condemning another person.
Murder (rāṣōaḥ) is the unsanctioned taking of human life; the term is used in the Decalogue with similar meaning. Context determines its specificity. The repeated use of the term bloodshed (dāmîm), at the end of the verse would seem to indicate the gravity and perceived frequency of this crime and the one that follows it. Hosea attributes it to a priestly band in 6:9.
Theft (gānōb) is also used in the Decalogue. It can be used in case law, where it describes kidnapping a person and stealing possessions (Exod. 21:16–17). No guilt is attached to the homeowner who strikes and kills a thief breaking into his property (Exod. 22:2 [MT 1]). The image of the “thief who breaks in” is used in Hos. 7:1.
Adultery (nāʾōp) is a term that Hosea can use elsewhere in a metaphorical sense, referring to the faithlessness of the people toward God. In the Decalogue it is used in its legal and covenantal sense to describe the breaking of the marriage vow wherein a man has sexual relations with a woman married to another man. For a married woman to have sexual relations with a man other than her husband is also considered adultery. The violation of marriage appears to be the charge in 4:2, as it occurs in the context of other social transgressions.
The verb associated with the list of vices indicates that they break forth (pāraṣ) in debilitating influence. The term can indicate vigorous and aggressive acts (Exod. 19:22, 24; 2 Sam. 5:20) and is also associated more specifically with violence and theft. In noun form it represents a robber or thief (Jer. 7:11; Ezek. 7:22). In Ezek. 18:10 a violent person (pārîṣ) is one who sheds blood. Hence the last clause of the verse follows naturally from the description of a societal outbreak of vices.
The expression bloodshed follows bloodshed (lit. “bloodshed touches bloodshed”) characterizes societal dissolution as a result of the vices listed previously. Thus it may include various acts of violence and theft, including murder.
- Escalating Violence
“They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed.”
Lloyd Ogilvie: There is a mounting intensity as Hosea lists the charges. Without a knowledge of God, they break all restraint. Literally this means “they break out” or they break through,” with the idea of restraint or boundaries implied. The commandments of God defined boundaries or restraints against destructive tendencies of sinful humans. When the commandments were rejected (no knowledge of God), there was no longer any restraint. This causes “bloodshed after bloodshed” (Hos. 4:2).
Allen Guenther: The indictments leveled against the people of the land consist of charges representing a rapid escalation of evil. The glue that holds society together is dissolving. Violence of one kind produces violence of another kind until the nation teeters at the brink of anarchy (cf. Amos 3:9-10).
Thomas Constable: Violent crimes were so common that they seemed to follow one another without interruption.
John Schultz: The Hebrew in vs. 2 is rather graphic in its description. It reads literally: “By swearing and lying and killing and stealing and committing adultery they break out and blood touches blood.” The Hebrew word, rendered by the NIV “they break all bounds” is parats, which means, “to break out,” literally or figuratively. It suggests that crime had reached epidemic proportions.
III. (:3) COSMIC CONSEQUENCES
“Therefore the land mourns, And everyone who lives in it languishes
Along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky;
And also the fish of the sea disappear.”
Robin Routledge: Human sin affects the stability of the created order and may allow chaos to return. A similar idea may lie behind the reference in Romans 8:19–22 to a frustrated and groaning creation.
James Mays: The catastrophe is not merely a drought, though partially pictured by drought-vocabulary, but a terrible diminution of life-forces which tends to a total absence of life. It is the effect of the divine curse and in this case for breach of covenant. See the juxtaposition of covenant breaking and such disaster in Isa. 24.4ff.; 33.8–9. The land is polluted by the crime of its inhabitants and will share the curse. No creature will escape. When the people of God break covenant, the whole creation suffers the consequences of their sin (Gen. 8.21; cf. Rom. 8.19ff.).
David Allen Hubbard: The annihilation of the animal kingdom is pictured in language that outstrips the flood story, where at least representatives of each species were preserved (Gen. 6:18–22). Hosea’s holocaust resembles closely Zephaniah’s (1:2–3) and echoes Genesis 1:30 in such a way that the appointed judgment for Israel’s sin is nothing less than the ‘reversal of creation’. Thus, Yahweh’s restoration, promised in 2:15–23, must include a renewed covenant with the entire animal kingdom (v. 18).
J. Andrew Dearman: After a summary of the evidence is listed, God’s case against the land and its inhabitants results in the dissolution of both the human and animal societies who inhabit the land. Indeed, the land itself is depicted as ill, just as the human community is rotten. This is Hosea’s holistic analysis at work. The three categories of animals, birds, and fish here in 4:3 are those listed in Ps. 8:7–8 (MT 8–9), a psalm that celebrates the exalted place of humankind in God’s good creation. The environment depicted in Hos. 4:3 is the withering, physically weak and depleted land of Israel. If bloodshed is the lot of the human community, then weakness and loss infect the land’s nonhuman inhabitants as well. This is tantamount to the reversal of creation and its good order, undone by human fallibility and culpability. Whereas the human community (and most certainly Israel) is designated collectively as God’s stewards, intended to bring order and rule in a good creation, human failure permeates creation with disorder and debilitation.
Verse 3 employs a verbal word pair to describe the disorder and weakness of the land and its inhabitants. They are the verbs ʾābal (“mourn”) and ʾāmal (“waste away”), used together in eight other contexts. Just as the land can be personified as harlotrous, so she can be depicted as mourning, weak, and sad. She is the matrix of life for the people and animals, and even when she is not, the fish of the sea are nevertheless similarly affected. In the holistic thinking of Hosea, the people and land (plants and animals) live in a symbiotic relationship. When YHWH and Israel live in a restored covenant relationship, as depicted at the conclusion of ch. 2, then the health and vitality of the land are everywhere apparent. The current failures of Israel, however, function like disease or a stain to produce an environmental debilitation. Such is the predicament of YHWH’s people and land (his household) in 4:1–3. It is a salutary reminder to readers that failures have consequences and that they cannot be compartmentalized and kept from permeating aspects of corporate existence.
Richard Patterson: After cataloguing the prevailing crimes of Israelite society, Hosea warns his hearers of the dire consequences of their conduct (v.3). Because they have committed spiritual adultery by their devotion to Baal, the Canaanite storm god who supposedly brought them the much needed rain for their crops (a violation of the first commandment), God will demonstrate to them just who it is that is in command of the natural world. Have they forgotten the demonstration of God’s authority through the ministry of Elijah (1 Kings 17-18)? They will soon understand that Baal is powerless.
Land is here personified as a mourner who has witnessed the perishing of those who depended on it. Indeed, all life will suffer—men, animals, birds, and water creatures. As Sweeney points out, “By employing such language, Hosea conveys the necessary inter-relationship between human actions and the state of the natural world, i.e. the role of humans to maintain the world of creation (cf. Gen 1:26). If human beings fail to maintain the proper order of their lives, the entire world of creation suffers.”